FAMOUS HOUSE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20072, 19 October 1939, Page 15

FAMOUS HOUSE

NO. 10 DOWNING STREET At'&'EAiLhuVl vA-. k> ji’wii-A'ilV-G i\''tv ; .i■.> iv. RECORD “Crowds gathered in Downing sires, to cneer Mr. Neville Chamberlain' . . . . and so the newspapers reporlcu another stirring scene al the door., •jf London's iamour No. 10. Foreigner who look into Downing street wonde. nuu Britain should house her Prim. . L.ihsier so meanly. The tact is that the appearance u. No. 10 is wholly deceptive, its i'aeacu . e the street is its smallest part. One., within, one realises that us wichn e.-.-.ends to twice the sired frontage, am depth is greater than that. You cross the marbled floored cn.ranee hall, and walk down a long corridor to reach the famous Cabinet woorn, which looks out ever the garden '.awards die Horse Guards' Parade. Dir Robert Walpole, 1732, was the first Minister to whom No. 10 Downing street was offered by King George if. But he would accept it only on condition that the house was attached ,o the Treasury as part of the oflice. As such it has since remained. The Prime Minister accordingly holds it oy right, though until the last halfcentury the occupants after Walpole were frequent Chancellors of the Exchequer. The practice was that should the First Lord not require its use, the Chancellor came in as second in the Commission of the Treasury. Many Alterations The house stands to-day as it was when largely rebuilt by the architect Kent for Sir Robert Walpole, with many subsequent alterations. The Gordon Rioters in 1780 poured into Downing street, but abstained from attacking the house, then occupied by | Lord North, or attempting to set it on fire. Wraxall, in his “Historical Memoirs.” tells how “night coming on. Lord North, accompanied by us all, mounted to the top of the house, where we beheld London, blazing in seven places, and could hear the platoons regularly firing in several directions.” The body of Spencer Perceval, a Prime Minister who was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons in 1812, was brought back to No. 10 Downing street and from it taken for burial. There have been deaths of Ministers in office at No. 10 —Charles Townshend in the eighteenth century, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in our time; the Earl of Iddesleigh, after leaving office, had a seizure and died when visiting the house. But one distinction which the nextdoor dwelling, that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, holds has not, so far as record tells, fallen to the Prime Minister’s residence. From No. 11 came, on January 7, 1854, the announcement of the birth there to Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone of a son —the child Herbert who became Viscount Gladstone. Ready Turn-Coat Sir George Downing gave his name to the street, but never lived in it. He was a scoundrel. He acquired the land on which he laid out the street after Cromwell’s sale of Crown properties, and at the Restoration persuaded the easy-going Charles II to allow his ownership. Downing, a ready turn-coat, served both sides, among other profitable offices as Ambassador to Holland; and when sent there by Charles he had the impudence to tell the States-General that Britain was not getting as good treatment as she had received under the usurper Cromwell. He fled before the fury of a Dutch mob after a particularly discreditable piece of business, and when years later it was proposed to send him again to Holland, Charles was warned in Council that the rabble would tear hime to pieces. The King said, smiling, “Well, I will venture him!”